Some Lie and Some Die Read Online Free PDF Page B

like the fabric of a tent belling about its pole. Under them, half-curled around the root, lay the girl’s body. It was somewhat in the position of a foetus,knees bent, arms folded so that the hands met under the chin.
    Even Wexford’s strong stomach lurched when he saw the face or what had been a face. It was a broken mass, encrusted with black blood and blacker flies which swarmed and buzzed sluggishly as the leafy covering was disturbed. Blood was in the hair too, streaking the yellow, fibrous mass, matting it in places into hard knots. And blood was probably on the dark red dress, but its material, the colour of coagulated blood, had absorbed and negatived it.
    The Greatheart were still performing.
    ‘A girl’s been murdered,’ Wexford said to Silk. ‘You must get this lot off the stage. Let me have a microphone.’
    The crowd murmured angrily as the musicians broke off in the middle of a song and retreated. The murmur grew more menacing when Wexford appeared in their place. He held up one hand. It had no effect.
    ‘Quiet, please. I must have quiet.’
    ‘Off, off, off!’ they shouted.
    All right. They could have it straight and see if that silenced them. ‘A girl has been murdered,’ he said, pitching his voice loud. ‘Her body is in the quarry.’ The voices died and he got the silence he wanted. ‘Thank you. We don’t yet know who she is. No one is to leave Sundays until I give permission. Understood?’ They said nothing. He felt a deep pity for them, their festival spoiled, their eager young faces now cold and shocked. ‘If anyone has missed a member of their party, a blonde girl in a red dress, will he or she please inform me?’
    Silk behaved rather as if Wexford himself had killed the girl and put her in his quarry. ‘Everything was going so well,’ he moaned. ‘Why did this have to happen? You’ll see, it’ll be another lever in the hands of the fuddy-duddies who want to suppress all free activity and gag young people. You see if I’m not right.’ He gazed distractedly skywards at the grey massy clouds which had rolled out of the west.
    Wexford turned from him to speak to a boy who touchedhis arm and said, ‘There was a girl in our party who’s disappeared. No one’s seen her since this morning. We thought she’d gone home. She wasn’t enjoying herself much.’
    ‘How was she dressed?’
    The boy considered and said, ‘Jeans, I think, and a green top.’
    ‘Fair hair? Mauve tights and shoes?’
    ‘God, no. She’s dark and she wasn’t wearing anything like that.’
    ‘It isn’t she,’ said Wexford.
    The rain was coming. He had a brief nightmarish vision of rain descending in torrents on the encampment, turning the trodden grass into seas of mud, beating on the fragile tents. And all the while, throughout the night certainly, he and every policeman he could get hold of would have to interrogate wet, unhappy and perhaps panicky teenagers.
    The photographers had come. He saw their car bumping over the hard turf and stop at the wooden bridge. Once she had been photographed, he could move her and perhaps begin the business of identification. He felt a dash of cold water on his hand as the first drops of rain fell.
    ‘I’ve been wondering if we could get them all into the house,’ said Silk.
    Eighty thousand people into one house? On the other hand, it was a big house …
    ‘Not possible. Don’t think of it.’
    Behind him a girl cleared her throat to attract his attention. Two girls stood there, one of them holding a black velvet coat.
    ‘Yes?’ he said quickly.
    ‘We haven’t seen our friend since last night. She left her coat in the tent and just went off. We can’t find her or her boy friend, and I thought—we thought …’
    ‘That she might be the girl we found? Describe her, please.’
    ‘She’s eighteen. Very dark hair, very pretty. She’s wearing black jeans. Oh, it isn’t her, is it? She’s called Rosie and her boy friend …’
    ‘Is Daniel.’ While the